Back in Black

by Rhys Ford

  Table of Contents

  Blurb

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Seventeen

  Eighteen

  Nineteen

  Twenty

  Epilogue

  More from Rhys Ford

  Readers love Rhys Ford

  About the Author

  By Rhys Ford

  Visit Dreamspinner Press

  Copyright

  Back in Black

  By Rhys Ford

  McGinnis Investigations: Book One

  There are eight million stories in the City of Angels but only one man can stumble upon the body of a former client while being chased by a pair of Dobermans and a deranged psycho dressed as a sheep.

  That man is Cole McGinnis.

  Since his last life-threatening case years ago, McGinnis has married the love of his life, Jae-Min Kim, consulted for the LAPD, and investigated cases as a private detective for hire. Yet nothing could have prepared him for the shocking discovery of a dead, grandmotherly woman at his feet and the cascade of murders that follows, even if he should have been used to it by now.

  Now he’s back in the dark world of murder and intrigue where every bullet appears to have his name on it and every answer he digs up seems to only create more questions. Hired by the dead woman’s husband, McGinnis has to figure out who is behind the crime spree. As if the twisted case of a murdered grandmother isn’t complicated enough, Death is knocking on his door, and each time it opens, Death is wearing a new face, leaving McGinnis to wonder who he can actually trust.

  This is for the Five. Because it always starts with all of you.

  For Lisa, sorry about the mess, and to Mary, sorry but you’ve got to give them back now.

  Also to Greg, because once more into the breach, baby.

  And to Elizabeth, thank you for taking a chance on the first one and letting me take Cole back out again.

  Acknowledgments

  TO MY wonderous Five—Penn, Tamm, Lea, and Jenn. I love you all.

  And to my other sisters—Lisa, Ree, Ren, and Mary—much love.

  Thanks will always go to Dreamspinner—Elizabeth, Lynn, Liz and her team, Naomi (who I bribe with cookies and tea), and everyone there who polishes what I send them. Thank you for being there.

  And to all of the readers who have wondered what happened to Cole and Jae. Here you go. Saranghae.

  One

  I SPENT most of my formative years in Chicago, faithfully cheering on the Cubs and looking down at people who put ketchup on their hot dogs. My older brother, Mike, was—and still is—a hard-core White Sox fan. This doesn’t explain anything about us as brothers other than he’s always on the wrong side of the fence when picking teams.

  Always.

  For example, at some far-off point in our childhood, back when he was actually taller than me, we played an imaginary game we called Cows and Sheep. I’m not sure where we got the idea, probably from some old movie, because it was pretty much an excuse for all-out warfare with dirt clods and water balloons under the guise of me as a cattle rancher and Mike as a sheep wrangler battling it out for control of the land’s only water source for our herds.

  Namely, the garden hose attached to the faucet on the side of the house.

  Now, while we didn’t actually have any cattle or sheep, I knew enough about the woolly ungulates to know they weren’t bipedal, six feet tall, with a flap in the front of their bodies for easy access to their dangly bits.

  Nor did they have a loaded Desert Eagle and a pair of Dobermans intent on running me to ground.

  “I’m supposed to be here!” Shouting over my shoulder didn’t seem to help. Maybe the costume’s head was too thick for him to hear me screaming at him, or perhaps he couldn’t make anything out except the dogs’ vicious, frenzied barking. I dodged a thick bush, but its branches slapped at my face with a withering sting as I went by. “I’m doing a security—”

  The sheep answered me with a bullet, blowing away the overgrown trellis I’d ducked through to get some distance between us. Its wood frame shattered, showering me with a tidal wave of leaves and splinters, probably adding to the welts already on my face and hands.

  This was supposed to be a quick recon—me testing the perimeter of a Brentwood estate not far from the Craftsman I shared with my husband, Jae, and where I ran my investigation business out of what used to be the massive sprawl’s front rooms. I’d taken the job as a favor for Dante Montoya, a detective my best friend, Bobby, used to work with. His boyfriend owned an elite security firm and needed someone who knew the area to scope out the grounds of an overgrown château. He’d been hired by the guy who recently bought it and discovered it was not only missing a perimeter wall but also was in Mother Nature’s firm, hard grip. But since he was being paid to break into the place on another night to test its defenses, he wanted someone who had no dog in the fight to give him a sketch of what the jungle around the battered château looked like but keep him clueless of the interior to better assess the situation.

  If I survived the culling, I was going to find Montoya’s boyfriend and punch him right in his pretty, funky-ass-eyed face.

  “I’m going to fucking kill you!” the sheep screamed from somewhere behind me.

  I couldn’t hear the dogs anymore, but I did kind of hope the man in the full-body costume took the time to Velcro the front flap closed. From what I had seen, it wasn’t much protection against the thorny hedges around us, but at least it would save some of his skin.

  I hadn’t gotten a good look at the man wearing it, but as costumes went, it was spectacular. Probably custom-made, it was a hair too cute for my tastes, but then I also couldn’t imagine myself dressed up as an ungulate complete with a pink bow and enormous round tinkling bell tied around my neck or somehow shoving my feet and hands into what looked like hard hooves.

  The place should have been empty. I’d been told no one lived there yet and it would be a month or two before renovations began to restore the old, creaking mansion. But when I discovered a light on in the small guesthouse a few yards from the garage I’d parked in front of, I went to investigate.

  I expected maybe a few teenagers drinking beer and smoking pot they’d taken from their mom’s stash, or even a transient who’d found a way into the fairly large single-room structure, planning on keeping safe and warm inside its thick walls.

  Instead I’d found Psycho Lamb Chop playing blanket mambo with an elegant socialite in pearls and ruffled bloomers, a slit worked into the pantaloons’ seams to allow Brave Sir Baa Baa easy access to her worldly treasures.

  I probably could have sneaked off without either one of them being the wiser except for one thing—well, two actually. The damned dogs.

  I’d seen this movie before. Hell, I’d been a recurring guest star in that particular strain of disasters through most of my career as a private investigator. But the sheep was new, and the dogs were really damned determined to take a chunk out of my ass.

  Seeing as I liked my ass where it was—and I had a husband who seemed pretty fond of it—I bolted.

  Shocked the hell out of me that Lamb Chop not only had the presence of mind to grab a weapon but also had the dexterity and stamina to run in those damned hooves.

  The lawn’s overgrowth made it easier to avoid the dogs, but they weren’t too far behind me. I knew the left side of the property shared a fairly solid wall with the next
estate, but the original twelve-foot-tall wrought iron fence surrounding the enormous plot had fallen into such disrepair that there were gaping stretches along the back and right boundaries. It was a contentious point with the property owners, or so I’d been told. Rather than erect their own fencing, they battled and sniped about the château’s falling metal spires and left the rusting iron segments to molder instead of securing their own homes.

  It was kind of ironic being chased by a man in a sheep costume after catching him in a nefarious act with a woman who had a few years on him and obviously was way out of his league, but honestly, I wasn’t all that surprised. Shit like this always seemed to happen to me. This wasn’t the first time I’d come across a couple of people having sex—make that kind of weird sex—only to have them spot me, nor the first time I had to run for my life while someone tried to blow my head off. It was kind of an occupational hazard. Private investigators usually didn’t get to pick and choose the cases that came through their front door, and since most of society’s problems revolved around sex or money, it made sense that most of our business at McGinnis Investigations dealt with spouses wanting to catch their significant others doing the nasty with someone other than themselves.

  This job wasn’t supposed to be like that. I was just to go in, take a recon of the buildings, and leave. I shouldn’t be on the run, although I had some serious questions about why the woman and Lamb Chop had two Dobermans with them in the guesthouse.

  “Where the fuck am I going?” It was difficult to make heads or tails of where I was. The paths through the greenery were vague at best, and the thickets were practically opaque, making it difficult to see beyond what was right in front of my face. “I don’t even know which way I’m facing.”

  There was a myth about moss growing only on the north side of a tree. Since I could barely remember if the Hollywood sign was north of me at any given moment, that wasn’t going to get me out of the jungle I’d stumbled into. The hard stone paths were littered with leaves, and every once in a while, I caught the hard clop of the sheep’s hooves striking rock, but the dogs were now oddly silent.

  “Where the hell are you guys?” I slowed my run down and crouched behind a stand of bushes and an oddly posed statue that could have been a woman with six arms or an aroused cuttlefish looking for a good time. Cloaked in shadows and a thick layer of tangled vines, it was difficult to tell what the carving was, but it gave me enough cover to catch my breath. “Shit, I’ve got to work on my conditioning.”

  The cuttlefish exploded in front of my face, its massive weave disintegrated by whatever high-powered piece of lead Mr. Flappy Sheep had loaded in his Eagle. Needless to say, it was enough of an incentive to get me moving again.

  Not knowing the grounds, I was at a severe disadvantage, and apparently I was being chased by an ex-Olympian or something. I couldn’t shake the sheep. He kept up with me pace for pace. Maybe he knew how the damned bushes and trees were laid out around the complicated multilevel stone terraces and hills that some idiot decided would be great to put down as landscaping for the château. It was an Escher vomit of leaves, rocks, and the occasional naked statue missing an arm or a head but still sporting raging cock-stands or pert breasts. Perhaps both. I wasn’t stopping long enough to admire the art when I could still hear the random movement of a Doberman somewhere behind me.

  While I couldn’t see the garage anymore, I was hoping it was behind me. Then I found out one of the dogs wasn’t.

  It came at me from the right, a slavering beast with a mouthful of shark teeth and glowing eyes. I love dogs. I have a dog—a small, slightly rotund mop of a dog named Honey who’d come back into my life after she was taken by my boyfriend Rick’s family when he was murdered. Honey was now a spoiled princess who spent her day toddling after Jae while he cooked or lounging in one of several dog beds in our house. Her biggest aggressive act to date had been a particularly virulent gaseous attack following the ingestion of a bag of frozen brussels sprouts she liberated from a shopping bag while we were putting away groceries.

  This Doberman was definitely not Honey.

  I couldn’t comment on its gas issues, but it sure as hell didn’t resemble the furry lump that slept at the end of our bed every night.

  It launched itself from a thin-leafed row of bushes I’d been about to run through and grabbed at my forearm. Up close, the dog looked even more massive than I remembered, but then the brain does funny things when it’s running on pure fear.

  Teeth longer than a scorned woman’s memory sank through the arm of my leather jacket, raking over the skin beneath. My heart stopped, picking up an erratic beat on my next panicked breath, but by then physics took over where my panic abandoned any logic and my jacket sleeve tore away, split apart by the dog’s sharp teeth, leaving leather shreds filling its mouth. Enraged, the Doberman shook its head, and I pulled hard, yanking my scraped-up arm out of the remains of my sleeve and leaving the dog to its impotent kill.

  I broke back into a hard run, leaving the Doberman to play with its best toy ever and hopefully distracted enough not to notice I’d left it behind.

  “Okay, McGinnis.” I started to give myself a pep talk because it didn’t seem like Lamb Chop had any intention of letting me get away without looking like a colander. “Just find a wall. That’ll either lead to the back or the front, but either way, you’ll at least be off the property.”

  My arm stung where the dog bit, but it wasn’t like I had a first aid kit in my back pocket. Jae was used to me coming home with all kinds of scrapes and bruises, but a dog bite, even one as shallow as this one, meant I was probably going to face his raised eyebrows and a skeptical snort. He never seemed to believe me when I said I never intended to get into any trouble. It was almost as if he hadn’t known me for several years and picked various bits of glass, metal, and the occasional thorn out of my skin. But I wanted to avoid having someone from the LAPD knock on our front door to tell him I’d been gunned down by a six-foot-tall sheep. There’s only so much humiliation a man can take, and that’s sure as hell not what I want written on my headstone.

  “Died having sex with his husband at the age of ninety-five” was more my style. But if I didn’t get my ass moving, Sir Flappy Bits would have my head mounted to his wall above a roaring fireplace and spend his cold wintry evenings regaling his animal-costumed friends of his hunt through the jungle on his own personal Wild Human Safari.

  Calming my breathing down, I listened for signs of the other dog and the rat-tat-tat of hooves on the uneven paths. The sounds of the Doberman working its way through my jacket sleeve were faint but distinct. It seemed happy, almost gleeful. So long as it was entertained and not coming after me, I was okay with it. I was less concerned about the other dog and deeply worried about the Desert Eagle.

  I didn’t know a lot about gardening, but I knew enough to recognize the bramble of rosebushes in front of me were about one foot shy of having a giant purple-and-black dragon fighting off a prince so he didn’t take away her kidnapped victim. There were a few faded, withered blooms clinging valiantly to the nest of neglected, spindly branches, but even in the sparse light from Los Angeles’s ever-present gloam, the thorns were abundant.

  There was a comment about life there. In the most horrific neglect, beauty fought to survive while violence thrived.

  It could’ve been just that the rosebushes had a lot of thorns. Bacon and Hobbes definitely weren’t threatened by my entry into philosophy. I would rather while away the evening with a hot pastrami sandwich and a cold beer than spend a couple of hours discussing whether or not we were made out of paper.

  The tinkle of Lamb Chop’s bell told me he was nearby. I had to get moving. I needed to find a way out, and I needed to find it fast.

  An aggressive bark growing louder spurred me on. The bushes suddenly didn’t appear so daunting, and if Prince Charming could hack through them to rescue a comatose woman he’d never met but intended to marry, I sure as hell could at least give it a try.
>
  Fuck. The rosebushes hurt like hell.

  They tore at my bare arm, digging into my already split-open skin. It seemed like every thorn grew an additional six inches simply to rip me open. My jeans protected my legs, and I pulled up the arm still encased in a sleeve to protect my face. I couldn’t see an end to the thicket, and searching for a way around didn’t seem like the smartest use of time. I didn’t know how long the Doberman would be enthralled with my jacket arm, and there was no telling how close the sheep was.

  To be fair, he didn’t need to get very close. He just needed a clear line of sight to blow my head off. I didn’t understand his rage, but then I didn’t know the story behind him in the sheep costume or anything about the woman he was with. Something back there was important enough for him to kill someone over, and I would rather that someone not be me.

  It seemed to take me forever before I was through the rosebushes, and when I stumbled free of the spindly branches, I found myself facing the fallen remains of a wrought iron fence. I almost kissed its rusty corpse with glee, but I wasn’t quite out of the woods yet. Literally.

  The château’s rear neighbor seemed to be resigned to the overgrowth, allowing at least a few yards of thick bushes and untrimmed trees to encroach the property line. They probably let it run rampant solely to hide the eyesore going stagnant behind them. A five-foot-tall decorative wall of stucco and tile jutted up from a strip of well-manicured lawn, offering me the promise of an oasis on the other side.

  I broke into a run as soon as I heard the bell chiming behind me.

  It felt like I was suffering from a thousand paper cuts, minute slashes from leaves and thorns with an ooze of blood turning my skin sticky. A warm trickle ran down my forehead, getting into my eyes, turning my vision blurry, but I was focused on the wall. I was tall enough to get my hands over the top of it and had enough faith in my abdominal muscles to pull myself over it, but I knew from unfortunate experience that the same could be said about a motivated Doberman.